1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming system and an image forming apparatus search method using WS-Discovery.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus such as a printer, a copier, a facsimile machine, or a multifunction peripheral (MFP) stores a setting value of a setting item for each function, such as printing, and executes a job on the basis of the setting value. When the image forming apparatus is introduced, the setting value is an initial value, which is not always set appropriately for each user. Therefore, there is an image forming apparatus that receives the setting value from another image forming apparatus via a network and stores the setting value for the image forming apparatus. In detail, there is an image forming apparatus that stores a list indicating models of the image forming apparatuses connected to the network, and specifies an image forming apparatus of a model similar to the image forming apparatus in the list, and receives the setting value from the specified similar image forming apparatus.
However, in a case where the list is to be stored in the respective image forming apparatuses, the lists stored in all the image forming apparatuses need to be updated when an image forming apparatus is added to or removed from the network. This increases the amount of work required to manage the system.
Therefore, there is an idea of searching the network for image forming apparatuses already connected to the network at the time of newly connecting an image forming apparatus to the network.
Meanwhile, there is a method using WS-Discovery in which a client apparatus searches the network for a device providing a desired web service. In using WS-Discovery, the client apparatus multicasts a Probe message to the devices connected to the network. When receiving the Probe message, the device providing the web service specified by the Probe message transmits a ProbeMatch message to the client apparatus.
That is, when one or more image forming apparatuses are connected via the network, it is possible for the client apparatus to search for the image forming apparatus providing a desired web service by using WS-Discovery.
However, in the conventional technology using WS-Discovery, the device is searched by using a desired type of web service as a key. Therefore, it is difficult to search for, for example, an image forming apparatus of a specific model or an image forming apparatus belonging simultaneously to two or more groups.
Further, in a case of searching, via the network, to determine what kinds of functions an image forming apparatus has, there is a method of receiving setting values of the functions one by one from the image forming apparatuses by using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
However, in the case of receiving the setting values of the functions from the respective image forming apparatuses via the network using SNMP, a receiving time period becomes longer in proportion to the number of the image forming apparatuses.